MICRO MEETS MACRO IN OLIVIA MUNROE’S ABSTRACT COMPOSITIONS: CIRCLES, CIRCLES, CIRCLES

AN ALBUQUERQUE GALLERY PRESENTS A MINI-SURVEY OF THE ARTIST’S WORKS OF RECENT YEARS

Published on November 9, 2025

by Edward M. Gómez

Simple lines and shapes have long been some of the most basic elements of art-making in different cultures around the world, as many modern artists’ creations have demonstrated.

The exploration of the expressive power of so-called pure form was a hallmark of much of what is now regarded, in retrospect, as one of the fundamental currents of classic modern art. Consider, for example, the imaginative use of line, shapes, and color, too, in the work of such artists as Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), Henri Matisse (1869-1954), Sonia Delaunay (1885-1979), Louise Nevelson (1899-1988), Ruth Asawa (1926-2013), or Martin Puryear (born 1941), among many others for whom form itself was as much the subject of their work and thinking as it was one of its main components.

Olivia Munroe, “Circles V,” 2022, ink and dye on cotton, 25.5 x 32.25 inches (65.8 x 81.92 centimeters); paper: 31.25 x 38 x 1.5 inches (79.4 x 96.5 x 3.8 centimeters). Photo courtesy of Richard Levy Gallery

Now based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the American artist Olivia Munroe (born 1953; Instagram: @olivia.munroe) has for many years worked in an abstract mode in which pure, simple form has played a big role. Her main compositional element: circles.

During the recent coronavirus pandemic period, after living and working for more than four decades in a coastal town in Connecticut, where she brought up her children and led art-making workshops for youngsters, Munroe moved to New Mexico, where one of her adult daughters was based.